Durham West Jr. Lightning prove they belong

Beat Toronto to grab share of second place

AJAX -- Every coach needs a benchmark win to measure their team against the rest of the competition in the league.

The Durham West Jr. Lightning got that win in Toronto on Saturday, beating the Aeros 2-1 in a Provincial Women's Hockey League game.

"That's the first time this group of kids beat the Aeros," said head coach Wayne McDonald. "That was a big win. We think we're a good team, but they are a top-four team and it was nice to go in and beat them."

A Samantha McKenzie goal in the first period and another by Laura Horwood in the second staked the Lightning to a 2-0 lead through two periods. The Aeros managed a power-play goal early in the third, the only shot to beat Kassidy Sauve, who faced 37 in total, steering aside 36 of them during a busy evening. All told, the Lightning were outshot 37-14.

It was the fifth win in a row for Sauve, who has started the past five games for the Lightning while Jackie Rochefort is out with a knee injury. The fourth win in that impressive run came on Friday, when the Lightning got an overtime goal by Stephanie Cooper to win 3-2 in Cambridge.

The overtime winner, with the man advantage, was a shining example of the importance specialty teams can play in deciding the outcome of a game.

"It was extremely important," said McDonald of his team's ability to cash in on the opportunity. "We played well considering the girls spent two, three, four hours in a car (because of the weather and bad driving conditions). It was good because Cambridge is a good team."

Down 1-0 after the opening period, Brittany St. James and Horwood scored in the second period, Horwood's coming on the power play, to take a 2-1 lead. Cambridge tied it before the period was out, and the teams blanked the third period.

The Lightning held a 37-21 advantage in shots for the game.

The weekend set also triggered a strange twist in the schedule that will see the Lightning play nine consecutive games away from their home ice at the Ajax Community Centre. The original schedule had them playing eight in a row, but a cancelled game from Nov. 25 in Waterloo has been rescheduled to Feb. 19, running the total to nine.

The Lightning don't return home until the final two games of the regular season on Feb. 23 and 24. McDonald, though, isn't making a big deal about it.

"No, it doesn't matter," he said. "We'd like to have a couple of home games in there, but it doesn't matter to us. We're fine.

"Our goal is to get in that top four position and that's still our goal."

To date, a top-four finish in the 20-team league is within reach. The Lightning (22-5-1-1) sit in a tie for second with Toronto (22-5-2-0) with 46 points each. They are seven points back of front-running Whitby, with each having three games in hand on the Wildcats.

This weekend the Lightning heads west, with games Friday in London, Saturday in Southwest and Sunday against Bluewater.